Vocabulary learning strategies and their effect on Turkish EFL learners outcomes

Abstract

This study aims at establishing the vocabulary learning strategies used by Turkish EFL learners, and investigating the effects of these strategies on their English learning outcomes. For this purpose a descriptive study was conducted among the freshman at Anadolu University, Education Faculty, English Language Teaching Department. In this study, being a replication, all data were collected with the administration of a Vocabulary Learning Strategies Questionnaire including all the independent variables and a vocabulary size test and TOEFL practice exam for language proficiency as the dependent variables to all freshman. However, deletion of missing data defined the number of subjects as 120. As a result of the descriptive statistics of the vocabulary learning, strategies questionnaire subjects reported using a wide variety of vocabulary learning strategies. Then the replies to the questionnaire were correlated with the results on the vocabulary size test and the TOEFL exam (language proficiency). In a multiple regression analysis, using word structure emerged as positive, but visual repetition and activation as negative predictors of TOEFL results. Only Selective Attention emerged as a positive predictor of vocabulary size test. In conclusion, results showed that, although subjects tend to use a variety of strategies, there was not much relation with the two dependent variables. Furthermore, correlation analysis showed that more strategies were related to vocabulary size, whereas, multiple regression analysis revealed a similar relation to both variables.